Habits & Addictions
Hypnosis for hair pulling and skin picking
Let your hands come to rest, gently and without shame.
Hair Pulling and Skin Picking is a self-hypnosis session for anyone tired of the quiet battle between their hands and the urge to pull or pick.
It works by settling the body and then repeating the image of hands resting flat on a surface. You spend most of the time rehearsing that stillness.
There is a specific moment in the evening when the hands go up almost without a thought.
It happens when the day is finished and the house is quiet, a quick way to smooth out the surface of things before you can stop yourself.
The problem is not just the pulling but the way the hour afterwards feels, standing in front of a mirror and wishing you had just stayed still.
What’s in it
Hands that settle on their own and a lot less shame about a habit you did not choose.
Why do it
A few quiet minutes lower the background tension the habit feeds on, so the hands go up less often.
- Theme
- Habits & Addictions
- Delivery styles
- 3
- Lengths
- Quick ~10mStandard ~20mDeep ~45m
- Ends
- Calm and present
- Stages
- 4
- On this shelf
- 23 sessions
Timeline: Start to Finish
The build spends time keeping the hands occupied and heavy in the lap while the body settles, rehearsing a state of rest that replaces the usual urge to pull.
3 of the 4 stages are named techniques with a published origin, credited under each.
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InductionStage 16 min
Progressive Muscle Relaxation
A classic head-to-toe relaxation. Tense and release, or simply soften, each muscle group in sequence.
After Edmund Jacobson PMR (1929); Dave Elman Hypnotherapy · what progressive muscle relaxation is
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DeepenerStage 23 min
Staircase Descent
Visualized stairs descending into a deeper level of trance. Each step takes you down.
After Ledochowski, Deep Trance Training Manual
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Suggestion ScriptStage 310 min
Hair Pulling and Skin Picking — Balanced
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AwakeningStage 42 min
Calm Alert Awakening
Awake and present, but calm rather than energized. Good for evening or pre-meeting use.
After Yapko, Trancework
Three ways to say it
The same goal, written three ways. You pick the one that sounds like something you would believe — and you can hear a different one tomorrow without rebuilding anything.
Balanced
Let your hands come to rest, gently and without shame. The default.
Future self
Meet the version of you who is at ease in your body with hands that rest quietly.
New identity
Step into being at ease in your body with hands that rest quietly, starting now.
Where it sits
The things you keep doing, and stopping doing them.
Before you press play
- This one asks for a bit of care. In the app it opens with a consent step before anything plays.
- Not the right session right now if any of these are live for you: open wounds or skin infection; trichotillomania or excoriation disorder under clinical care.
Hypnosis is not for everyone. If you have epilepsy, a psychotic illness, or you are under psychiatric care, talk to your clinician before using this — here or anywhere.
Why this works — and what the research actually says
Group-level, not session-level: no study has tested this exact session, and we will not pretend otherwise. Every source below was opened and read on 2026-08-25 before it was quoted.
Why do it as hypnosis?
This is not a debate about willpower, because the hands have already moved before willpower is asked to speak.
What can be done is to lower the level of background tightness that the habit feeds on, by giving the system something else to do with its attention. It does not stop the motion by force.
It settles the body and occupies the hands so that the first urge is easier to let pass without acting on it.
Quitting smoking: the honest answer is that nobody knows yet
Cochrane grades medical evidence for a living. It reviewed 14 trials of hypnotherapy for quitting smoking, covering 1,926 people followed for at least six months.
Its verdict was not that it works, and not that it fails — it was that there is not enough good evidence to tell. If there is a benefit, they say it is small at most.
- 14 randomised trials, 1,926 people, followed six months or more
- Verdict: insufficient evidence either way
- Only 1 of the 14 trials was judged at low risk of bias
Worth knowing: The review rates its own evidence as ranging "from low to very low certainty, as there was not enough information and many of the studies had issues with their designs".
One study was judged at low risk of bias overall, ten at high risk and three unclear. On safety, most studies did not report whether adverse events were even collected.
The exact wording and figures
A Cochrane review pooled 14 randomised controlled trials with 1,926 participants.
Its conclusion: "There is insufficient evidence to determine whether hypnotherapy is more effective for smoking cessation than other forms of behavioural support or unassisted quitting.
If a benefit is present, current evidence suggests the benefit is small at most."
We sell sessions for this. We are showing you the review that declines to endorse them, because you should know what the evidence says before you decide.
Barnes J, McRobbie H, Dong CY, Walker N, Hartmann-Boyce J (2019). Hypnotherapy for smoking cessation. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, CD001008.
plain-language summary free to read
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